- The novel deals with a number of philosophical themes, including pain and cruelty, moral responsibility, human identity, and human interference with nature. Wells described it as "an exercise in youthful blasphemy."
- (Wikipedia)
- Excerpt from the introduction:
- The following narrative was found among his papers by the undersigned, his nephew and heir, but unaccompanied by any definite request for publication.
- The only island known to exist in the region in which my uncle was picked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited. It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailors then landed but found nothing living thereon except certain curious white moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats.
- So that this narrative is without confirmation in its most essential particular. With that understood, there seems no harm in putting this strange story before the public in accordance, as I believe, with my uncle's intentions. There is at least this much on its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge.
- In some way, he must have lived during the interval. And it seems that a schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies, did start from Africa with a puma and certain other animals aboard in January 1887, that the vessel was well known at several ports in the South Pacific, and that it finally dis- appeared from those seas (with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknown fate from Bayna in December 1887, a date that tallies entirely with my uncle's story.
- Author: H. G. Wells
- Publication date: 1896
- Publisher New York, Stone & Kimball
The Island of Doctor Moreau
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